One, #11
Ohara's "One" was featured in the Museum of Modern Art's 1970 exhibition Information, which first summarized Conceptual Art for the wider public. The series in its entirety (published as a book without text) comprised nearly a thousand brightly lit, startling close-ups of blank, anonymous faces in seemingly every color, shape, and texture. In one concise gesture, Ohara synthesized many hallmarks of 1960s Conceptualism: the deadpan typological photography of the Bechers; the seriality and random sampling seen in Warhol and Ruscha; and the modular progressions of primary structures common to the Minimalist sculpture of Judd and Lewitt. By imposing a standard format on a plethora of diverse faces, the artist recalls modern rituals such as the mug shot, passport photo, or police line-up, which filter individual subjects through the homogenizing, bureaucratic systems of contemporary life. The result is what Ohara described as "a telephone book of faces."
Artwork Details
- Title: One, #11
- Artist: Ken Ohara (American, born Tokyo, 1942)
- Date: 1970
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 25.4 x 20.3cm (10 x 8 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2001
- Object Number: 2001.486.4
- Rights and Reproduction: © 1970 Ken Ohara
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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